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1.4.3-Ceruleancrowns
1.4.3: The Lark So, I haven’t been on this tag for more than a week. Got distracted by Foucault’s Pendulum, and the next thing I knew, more than a week has passed and I hadn’t even touched the brick. Here is abused Cosette front and center and it’s breaking my heart. She was only five years old. FIVE. What that much abuse done to her, a part of me is really glad that she forgot all about it when she grew up. This woman, like many of her kind, had a certain amount of caresses and a certain amount of blows and hard words to dispense each day. If she had not had Cosette, surely her daughters, idolized as they were, would have received it all… This means that after Valjean took Cosette, Madame Thenardier started hitting Eponine and Azelma too. They must have been so jarred, having their mother who had given them nothing but caresses suddenly turn violent on them. Poor dears. … Thenardier, having learned in some obscure way that the child was probably illegitimate and that her mother could not acknowledge her… I really wonder how they found out. Rumors? People from Paris who knew her and ended up in their inn? Then again, Fantine’s desperation in asking them to take Cosette was a big clue. Is that why people weren’t bothered by the Thenardier’s treatment of Cosette? Because she was illegitimate? All they did was give her a nickname and praise the Thenardiers just for taking her in. Wow, Hugo, first the people in Digne, now, here in Montfermeil. All your crowds are assholes. Hello, mob mentality. …the poor lark never sang. Now, I just want to hug little Cosette and tell her that everything will be okay soon because a big socially-awkward ex-convict will soon rescue her and everything will be happy (well, not entirely but anything’s better than this). Sorry, started watching Shoujo Cosette so Cosette feelings are everywhere. Commentary Treblemirinlens Shoujo Cosette = lots of Cosette feels all around The bit about Thenardier finding out always makes me think of the bit from an earlier draft where someone borrowed Cosette from them to go begging in Paris and Cosette spotted Tholomyes and called him papa. I’ll have to try and look that up again when I get home. I get the impression that the townspeople thought Cosette was lucky to have any kind of shelter and food at all. Ceruleancrowns (reply to Treblemirinlens) Ooh, I haven’t seen that draft yet. Please post a link! :) This chapter just makes me so emotional and frustrated. She was five and she had no one. It doesn’t seem like the Thenardiers were hiding the fact that she was practically their slave and being treated like an animal, and they considered her lucky, and now, the poor girl thinks that she deserves it because everyone says so and I just want to be absorbed into the book so that I can throttle the Thenardiers. Treblemirinlens (reply to Ceruleancrowns' reply) Home again and here’s the link: Carpe Horas http://chanvrerie.net/outtakes/ has lots of great geeky Les Mis things! I’d love to give the Thenardiers a good swift kick myself and also shower little Cosette with hugs. Ceruleancrowns (reply to Treblemirinlens' reply) Thank you! :) Pilferingapples I am really happy that everyone seems on board with the idea that Madame Thenardier’s mothering was awful for all the kids (I mean Hugo’s clearly on board,too. but I mean everyone in the club). I think— pulling myself away from the intimacy of the abuse going on here, going for the symbolic, because Les Mis— this is a microreflection of the way a broken system is dangerous and destructive to everyone, even the favored participants. But I’ll talk about that in later, happier chapters, because even in Les Mis, THERE ARE MANY HAPPIER CHAPTERS.